In our journey through life we measure so much of it in straight lines. The days on our calendars stacked in neat rows. The charts and graphs of progress displayed in horizontal and vertical grids. But it wasn’t always this way.

The ancient Irish consciousness was never drawn to a straight line. It avoided ways of seeing and being that seek satisfaction in certainty and instead embraced the mystery of the circle. These ancestors viewed their movement through each day, each year, and each season as a cyclic journey. There were no absolutes of beginning and end. They lived in circular houses and they worshipped in circular structures, understanding the power of circle to hold and move energy. Ireland’s landscape is filled with the remnants of stone circles, ring forts, and cairn temples that still resonate this powerful energy. When we gather in one of these sites there is an ancient circle that closes around us and an ancient belonging that awakens and holds us as we enter the mystery of sacred encounter.

It is a soul connection that cannot be charted or graphed or stacked in neat rows. It is an ancient knowing that just doesn’t line up.

My husband woke up one morning with a slug tangled in his long hair. We were living in a tipi for a year while we gathered together the recycled lumber to build our house. Slugs aside…and they were aside, inside, and outside…it was a year of coming to appreciate why it was the plains tribes that lived in tipis, not those living in the coastal rain belt of the Pacific Northwest. Silly white people. But it was romantic. It was a year of living on the Earth. It was a year of living round. And it was one of the best years of our relationship.

From the American plains to Tibet to Africa and beyond many indigenous cultures lived in round houses. And many still do. What I didn’t realize was that living round was also part of my indigenous heritage. The Irish lived in round homes and the first time I entered one, albeit a reconstruction, I felt an immediate and powerful resonance. There is such harmony in a round space. Energy flows differently. It doesn’t get lost in the corners. And neither do the people. Living round holds such beauty, simplicity, and grace. What did they know that we have long forgotten?